


A knotted thread

by LiveOakWithMoss



Series: Silmarillion Prompts [26]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Actual attachment disguised as manipulation disguised as something else entirely, Introspective Curufin introspects (but avoids the actually difficult questions), Lies, M/M, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-17
Updated: 2015-03-17
Packaged: 2018-03-17 03:39:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3513959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveOakWithMoss/pseuds/LiveOakWithMoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Celegorm asks why, and Curufin ponders the answer. (But does not discover, or does not deliver, the truth.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A knotted thread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cygnete](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cygnete/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [A knotted thread](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5044870) by [shadowoftheday654321](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowoftheday654321/pseuds/shadowoftheday654321)



> 0\. This was written for the prompt: "Curufin contemplating why he's attracted to Finrod." It was not Silje's prompt, but she has been such a profound influence on how I think about this pairing and what makes them tick that I felt I should dedicate it to her anyway.

_Why him?_  Celegorm asks him at one point, eyes dark and accusatory – and, if Curufin does not know better – resentful.  _What can he give you? What do you get from him?_

Curufin pauses, before giving his answer.

 _He is a tool_ , he says at last.  _He is a means to an end, and I wish to use him._

It is not entirely the truth.

 

- 

 

Since his youth, he has been fascinated by locks. With age he is now an adept at opening what is closed, revealing the concealed.

As with mechanisms and closed doors, so too with people.

Finrod is a lock, a puzzle, a thing to be explored, investigated…opened.

And open he does, beneath Curufin’s clever tongue, and adept hands, and suggestive voice. Oh, how he opens.

And yet –

                   and yet.

However much Finrod comes unwound and unbound and undone before him, whatever Curufin finds beneath the surface, whatever knots he unties – when Curufin searches his mind in the darkness after, a frustration remains. Finrod sleeps at his side, a half smile on his lips, and Curufin feels a creeping certainty that what he has discovered is what he has been allowed to find.   _There is more out of sight_ , that half smile tells him, and he burns to know what it is. However sated his body, his mind never is, and he wonders if this is by design.

 _There is more to be found_.

So he keeps coming back.

He watches Finrod, endlessly, obsessively. Finrod, as all say, is generous, giving, good-hearted to a fault. He is certainly generous enough to Curufin, in countless ways, and Curufin, as all know, is greedy.

And yet –

                  and yet.

Curufin can’t help but notice that for everything that Finrod gives away, he gains as much, and more, in return. None would suspect such a kind and warm and  _open_  soul to have ulterior motives, to be calculating in the gifts he gives and the allowances he yields – except Curufin. None would suspect such a soul to be a liar – except for one who speaks lies as his mother tongue.

 _Ah,_  Curufin thinks,  _we are not so different, thee and I._

 _Ah_ , he thinks,  _a challenge worthy of my time._

It is for that, he tells himself, that he returns, time after time. Sometimes for pleasure, sometimes to talk long into the night, until their voices weary and Finrod leans against his shoulder, laughing, and says,  _To bed, I think_.

The challenge, yes.

It is certainly not attachment. It is certainly not because at this point, he cannot stop.

 

- 

 

But his brother is watching him now, suspicion in the strong lines of his face, and Curufin shakes himself free of the memory of that morning, when he woke in Finrod’s bed and was momentarily calm and content enough not to care that Finrod’s fingers were carding lazily through his hair, making careless plaits.

(It was a moment of weakness.)

 _He is a tool_ , is all he tells his brother.  _He is useful; with what he gives me, we have power._

 _Also_ , he says, with a flash of a sharp smile that is, momentarily, as feral as Celegorm’s own,  _You know I am fond of beautiful things, brother. He is very beautiful, and I wished to have him._

_So I took him, and now he is mine._

It is not, as it transpires, entirely the truth.


End file.
